Jerry Hood calls it a match made in football heaven.

“Here’s the bottom line,” the Clay-Chalkville football coach said, “Jerry Hood got lucky. He went to a great place with great athletes. The administration supported him, the parents supported him and we managed to pull it all together to have this kind of success.”

Hood on why this is a marriage made in football heaven: “The funny thing is I needed Clay as much as Clay needed some structure.”

The Cougars won the Class 6A Alabama High School Athletic Association championship last year in Auburn. Tonight at 7, Hood leads his No. 1 team into a bid for a second title, this time against No. 2 Spanish Fort at Bryant-Denny Stadium on the campus of the University of Alabama.

“I got lucky to be with these guys,” Hood repeated. “The fun part is I get to be with these guys and we can see what we can make of it.”

The coach said Clay-Chalkville has made his job fun, which is a change from his prior stop, where he felt somewhat jilted.

Hood was an assistant for five years under Tony Pugh when Oak Mountain opened. He took the reins and led the Eagles to the Class 6A semifinals in his second year as the head coach.
Some thought “it was time to make a change” when Oak Mountain went 5-5, 6-4 and 3-7 in its next three seasons. Hood wound up at Clay-Chalkville, where after a pair of losing seasons players felt like they were struggling.

“A lot of it was just perception and attitude,” he said.

There’s a new perspective at Clay-Chalkville now. The Cougars are 39-2 during the past three seasons, including an undefeated championship run last season and an impressive 36-31 win over Saraland in last year’s title game.

“The funny thing is I needed Clay as much as Clay needed some structure,” Hood said. “When we all married up together, it’s been a great seven years. This is a marriage made in football heaven.”